Heaven 17 Turned Down a $7,500 Offer for a GTA VI Sync Deal — Was That the Right Call?

Photo Credit: Rockstar Games

How much does Rockstar Games pay for its sync licensing deals for the popular gaming franchise Grand Theft Auto? While each deal is different—an offer made to Heaven 17 sheds more light on how much these licensing deals are worth.Heaven 17 singer Martyn Ware took to X/Twitter yesterday to state that Rockstar Games approached the band about using their 1983 song “Temptation” in the upcoming soundtrack. Ware says he was offered around $7,500, which means the split between the three members would bring the sync deal to around $22,500 for inclusion of the song in the next Grand Theft Auto VI entry.

“I was recently contacted by my publishers on behalf of Rockstar Games [for] the possibility of using ‘Temptation’ on the new Grand Theft Auto 6,” Ware tweeted. “Naturally excited about the immense wealth that was about to head my way, I scrolled to the bottom of the email about the offer—it was $7,500. For a buyout of any future royalties from the game forever. To put this in context, Grand Theft Auto 5 grossed $8.6 billion. Ah but think of the exposure,” he writes. “Go f*ck yourself.”

When asked what he perceived as a fair offer, Martyn told a fan on Twitter, “$75,000 for a buyout — or no advance required for a reasonable royalty.” While Rockstar Games isn’t getting into the nitty gritty of how it licenses its music for its games, a ‘reasonable royalty’ is probably not the approach the game developer wants to take since it must license mechanical and broadcast rights as these songs appear on fake radio stations in the game.Rockstar licenses music for its games for around $5,000 – $30,000 per track, depending on the track’s popularity. Each of these tracks are licensed for around 7 to 10 years—with no royalty fee attached. Jeffrey Brabec, Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for the BMG explains in more detail how game developers license music for their works.

“If an artist does not agree to a buyout, then that artists’ work will not be put in the video game,” Brabec says. Since these music licenses are for a set period of time, we’ve already seen music removed from older versions of Grand Theft Auto in their subsequent re-releases. Some of the songs removed from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for its re-release include “Wow” by Kate Bush, “Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne, “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson, and “Running with the Night” by Lionel Richie.